10 years later, Columbine's hold remains strong

In an April 20, 1999 file photo, young women head to a library near Columbine High School where students and faculty members were evacuated after two gunmen went on a shooting rampage in the school in the southwest Denver suburb of Littleton, Colo. (AP Photo/Kevin Higley/file)
— AP

In an April 20, 1999 file photo, young women head to a library near Columbine High School where students and faculty members were evacuated after two gunmen went on a shooting rampage in the school in the southwest Denver suburb of Littleton, Colo. (AP Photo/Kevin Higley/file)
/ AP

Cable news channels were just spreading their wings and live coverage of breaking stories was coming into its own, said Al Tompkins, a former TV news director who teaches classes in broadcast and online news at the Poynter Institute.

"Unlike some of the shootings that were only covered in the aftermath ... millions of Americans watched as it unfolded, which obviously has a much greater effect on the American psyche than if you watch some footage on the 11 o'clock news," said Fox, the criminologist at Northeastern.

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Compounding the horror was the shock that the shootings happened in a fairly typical American suburb.

"We couldn't understand how this could happen in any place other than urban schools," said J. William Spencer, an associate professor who teaches sociology at Purdue University.

The illusion of safety had begun to weaken with the Alaska school attack in early 1997. At Columbine, it collapsed.

"It was no longer possible to disassociate – 'Oh, that's something that happened at some faraway town in some other state,'" Muschert said. "People started to have the perception that 'it could happen here.'"

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Harris and Klebold's rampage made a lasting impression on other troubled young men.

Twenty-three-year-old Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University two years ago Thursday, left a video referring to "martyrs like Eric and Dylan."

Matthew Murray, 24, who killed four people that year at a church and a missionary training school in Colorado, compared himself to Harris and Cho in an Internet posting.

Eighteen-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who in 2007 killed eight people at a high school in Tuusula, Finland, wrote e-mails about Columbine and put posts on a Web site dedicated to Harris and Klebold.

Like Harris and Klebold, all three shooters committed suicide.

"Subsequent shooters who have been fueled by a kind of competitive urge cite Columbine first, foremost and always," Newman said.

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Survivor Patrick Ireland, the student seen on TV escaping through the second-floor library window, is weary of the school being a benchmark for tragedy.

"I hate it when people say, 'Oh, another Columbine-like (tragedy) or Columbine-esque tragedy,'" said Ireland, now 27 and married and working for the Northwestern Mutual Financial Network.

"Columbine is a school. The shooting was an event that happened and a lot of people have been able to overcome so many things from that," said Ireland, who has regained mobility with few lingering effects from gunshot wounds to his head and leg.

Columbine's hold on the American psyche will weaken when today's adults, who remember the attack so vividly, give way to a new generation, Newman said.

At Columbine High School, the generational shift has already begun. This year's graduating seniors were 8 years old at the time of the massacre. The freshmen were 4.

Cindy Stevenson, superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools, which includes Columbine, said the events of 1999 don't seem to weigh on Columbine today.

"I can only tell you my impression as I watch the kids," she said. "It feels like any other high school in our district."